I wasn’t ready – a few nights were outside of my comfort zone – and working outside for more than quarter hour required rehydration at the ready.
But then it went back to its proper cold and damp state and required woolens.
I realized if I hurried along my latest baktus, I’d actually be able to wear it immediately instead of packing it away for the autumn.
And so I did and have been – it still needs to be blocked, but the weather might turn warm again before it dries…
In the meantime, I’m cozy with it-
or all three…
They’re becoming invasive in my woolen collection…
And in outdoor news, the march of the invasives in our yard continues…
This front yard patch of bugleweed is doubled from last year, soldiering through the lesser celandine.
I gave up fighting the ground invasives unless I hear about something magical and effective, but natural and easy – and perhaps the bugleweed will take over my ultimate nemesis the Japanese stiltgrass – I do like the intense blue too, and I don’t think it’s technically invasive, just non-native and aggressive, so I wouldn’t mind if it took over that part of the yard completely…
And the lilac is doing so much better after its year free of Chinese wisteria. I’ve left a tiny patch of that stuff to attempt to train, but perhaps that isn’t responsible – it would just take one untended season and the stuff would take over the hillside again.
Pray for me as I go in for the first of several annual poison ivy tear-outs soon too – too bad that is the only native stuff.
And now I should return to the knitting I’ve ignored for the baktus – none of that will be ready to wear in these last cool days…
(perhaps not even by the time the cool weather returns in a few months…)
I write this blog primarily as a record of things I do with my hands and a few notable (to me) life things. I used to keep a written journal, but stopped over a decade ago. I sort of keep sketchbooks and “idea” books, but only sporadically and they’re often hard to decipher. So the blog format does in its metadata what I don’t tend to do in life – keep track of dates and things in general in an orderly fashion – and has neat writing and doesn’t require anything sticky for pictures. So I really don’t care about having thousandshundreds tens of followers (although sponsorship and getting free shit would be nice, though I also find that annoying) and I don’t pay much attention to the statistics, however I’m finding some of the search terms people have used and (sometimes unfortunately) ended up here fascinating and/or amusing. The bulk of them are practical – people looking up patterns, ideas for recycling fabrics, and people and places I’ve mentioned, but a few stick out.
So I will try to give you what you were really looking for, answer your questions, or encourage you to come back to clarify, in honor of my blogiversary.
Though the web has gotten so vast that you no longer need professionals and masters degrees (like mine) to make an optimal query in a search engine (and I’m also guilty of occasionally just typing in short questions) some people are taking it a bit too far:
WHAT ADJUSTMENTS DO I NEED TO MAKE A HONEYCOWL OUT OF SOCKWEIGHT YARN
Um, if you know the Honeycowl, then you probably use ravelry, so get off Google and use their awesome search features to see how others did it, fool.
And of course for the dirtier of mind, I’m sure plenty experience disappointment in landing here – some terms are just dull, others I may intentionally use just for shits and giggles, like:
COCK SOCKS
Which no, I’ll not quite give you that, but enjoy the Red Hot Chili Peppers instead.
Another searched for:
SOCK MONKEY LUDE PICS
And I’ll happily oblige, that is if you really meant “lewd”… otherwise I do not know what a sock monkey would pop to chill out.
(I was too lazy or mildly creeped out to stage this in a more sexy setting…)
And one of my favorites:
DUSTY OLD THINGS
This might be the pass-phrase to my heart. And hopefully you’ve been back recently to take in my post about the dusty old things I recently found.
And an obsession with gender-appropriateness in which I do not understand:
DOES WEARING A POLYESTER SCARF MAKE ME LOOK GAY
Yes, if it is rainbow colored (but even then you could just be a supporter of gay rights). Otherwise you just look cheap and a supporter of petrochemicals and possibly slave labor.
MAN WEARING BAKTUS
Here’s a man in a baktus (and a lacy one to boot):
And one that I searched for myself:
BAD HAT QUILT
Not sure what this could mean – a quilt made of bad/ugly hats? Badly knitted hats? Then that would be an afghan of sorts… Or a tiny quilt to cover a bad hat? Or a tiny quilt to tuck in the unloved hat at night? Or by bad do you mean good?
And some mild WTFs:
SLIMY GREEN SNOT WORM
You should probably get that checked out, or if you are a child, get away from the screen and go outside to play.
BEER BOX QUILT
A quilt made from beer boxes? Are you a hobo?
UNEMPLOYMENT PAINTINGS
Yeah, aren’t those most paintings?
HOW TO DRESS A ROOM WITH SANDED FLOOR
One sleeve (curtain) at a time, or a little oil and vinegar.
IN WHICH FINGER SHOULD JADEITE BE WORN
Whoa, are you planning to surgically bejewel yourself?
SOCK FOOT MAN TUCK
I don’t know if this is supposed to be dirty or if it’s an inquiry about taking in now baggy socks after significant weight loss…
FLOOR SANDER TSHIRTS
Do you mean the best t-shirts to use as rags while sanding the floor? Or the logo of sanding machine? Or do you want to buy one?
Check out my redbubble shop for more ASTITCHMATISM swag including veggie weenie totes and phone cases – not sure how long I’ll have it up, so get stuff now!
I STILL HAVE JET LAG
I’m sorry, that really sucks, but at least you got home with all fingers intact and the luxury of leisure time or a tolerant boss who hasn’t fired your slacking-off ass yet.
CHEAPER ALTERNATIVE TO HEXAGON FLOOR TILE
Hex tile (not the fancy-pants marble or 100% authentic reproduction stuff) is really some of the most affordable (and attractive) floor tile available, but it’s most cheap if you learn to install it yourself – it’s really not that difficult – you can do it!
YARN OPENESS
My yarn and I have a really special relationship, I know that my yarn can come to talk to me about absolutely anything, no matter how embarrassing or scary – the key is to set boundaries but always have a swinging gate of dialog – and maybe you’ll be proud of your yarn someday too.
ORGANIC FARM CURTAINS
I think that is evidence that we’ve lost all hope.
HOW DO YOU SPELL TCHOTZKIE
Tchotchke.
(But if you landed here, does that mean I spelled it wrong somewhere…?)
SISTER BROTHER FISTBAD WAP
And with that, I’ve got nothing (hopefully it’s not something awful).
Thanks for reading and do stick around for another year!
A few years ago I came across this pattern by Terhi Montonen who made it as a variation of Baktus Scarf by Strikkelise on Ravelry. For a while (longer than I’d like to admit) I thought this pattern was called batkus and in my often 12-year-old-boy brain, I thought of it as buttkiss, so buttkiss it will always be to me. I knit my own hybrids of a basic watch cap, plain socks, and one particular Stephen West hat pattern over and over again for gifts and hard-wearing work-a-day items, but the Lacy Baktus is the only pattern I really feel like I could knit ad infinitum as is without modification beyond size.
I didn’t quite capture the colors correctly in the in-progress pic, but the second image is accurate. That one also shows our former awesomely textured and colored garage wall… sigh. But I really liked the finished scarf/shawlette hybrid. I loved that it stretched lengthwise but it was a long tapered triangle. The only minor fault I have with this one is that it is at times slightly too short – we’re talking only an inch or two – when I tie for more warmth or protection against grabby wind the ends poke out rather than drape downwards, but no big deal.
Maybe it was the same year, or the next, but I was caught without a gift for my mother’s birthday. I’d already picked out this Plymouth Happy Feet sock yarn for myself and had it patiently waiting in my stash, but I knew my mom liked orange and at the time had a pair of eyeglasses with purple and orange streaks in them, so it was a good match. N and I were in a long-distance purgatory at the time too so I had a lot of time to knit in airports and trains. I found this to be perhaps the most perfect travel project since it required no complex thought and was extremely gratifying to watch grow and then shrink, and could be interrupted and shoved back in my bag with little worry. I even used some ghastly but surprisingly comfortable TSA-friendly plastic needles whose origins are completely unknown to me – I think they came from a box of miscellaneous sewing supplies from a garage sale.
The Happy Feet had a bit more yardage, so the finished scarf was the perfect length even before blocking. Mom wouldn’t model it for me, but Dad is a good sport. I’m tempted to re-buy this yarn to do a re-run for myself, but I have plenty of other pretty things languishing in my stash, not to mention I think this color is discontinued.
But I had to have another, and I thought an even bigger one would be that much better. I actually bought the yarn specifically for this – usually I see something on sale and buy as much of it as I can reasonably justify and figure out what to make with it later, but I actually went seeking for something with a little bling. Yes, I said bling – highly uncharacteristic of me, but I wanted a scarf that could look a little more downtown and a little less rustic farmyard. So I bought sock yarn called “Disco Color” (audible cringe) by Schoeller Stahl’s Fortissima line, but it was perfect because the little strand of silver metallic polyester* is surrounded by hard-wearing wool and along with the grey there is a nice greenish teal that fails to show up in the pictures. It is the same color as bits of wood I’ve been finding in the forest, though I don’t know if it is a particular tree species, fungal or floral organism on or in the wood, or tinted by green deer pee.**
So I worked on this most of last Spring and early Summer when I was not coping very well with the slashing and burning of my job and subsequent relocation and it was rather soothing activity. A large section of it was done when while we were resting from hikes in the Adirondacks.
Then it was done before I was ready to finish it and I had to wait for the weather to cool down into autumn to wear it. But wear it I did, and continue to do. It’s also been traveling quite a bit.
And it does well to dress-up a t-shirt (even after it has spent a day on the trail), and I do in fact own several very similar grey wool t-shirts. I like grey and I like wool, nothing wrong with that, right? And at times it has also functioned properly and well as an honest-to-god good wooly warmth machine and left the cafes and city streets to go hiking with me.
The sunset just barely catches some of the bling…
And you know what? I decided I wanted another, and then maybe another after that. And I thought that since I love the pattern so much, I will make one with a yarn I don’t really love at the moment to see if my opinion of it will change. If it doesn’t, I will have another gift to give, if it does, I will have a new scarf in warmer colors. This one will be a little larger than the second (orange) one but not as gloriously large as the grey.
Yep, onward! And a last-minute long weekend trip back to the Adirondacks last month was the perfect time to start it.
I will take my time with it though since I have other things waiting to be completed. I’m thinking this might also be a good project for the beach…***
I can’t say I’m falling in love with this one yet – my uneven (intentionally) handspun makes it look a bit more wonky than I’d like, but it feels good to be making it…
*Yes, these two words, especially in combination, typically make me run for the hills… and I believe this yarn might be discontinued as well, but it can still be purchased from various shops and online purveyors.
**Happens when the deer eats something in late winter – you can look up a pic of it yourself.
***I detest swimwear and all things beach bum, but the sea is somewhat sorta close by and we currently have no yard so I can pretend it is our outdoor living space at the moment.
ASTITCHMATISM 